Companies are deserting the FTSE because of a shortage of investment – but there is a solution

Britain had it in its power to be a genuine hi-tech superpower. Instead, the opportunity slipped through our fingers, as we have been “tech-stripped” on a monumental scale. On one estimate, up to half the FTSE 100 could now be populated by vigorous British tech companies but those are all now foreign owned with one exception, Sage. The implications for our industrial, business, services and even defence base are dire – one of the most important condemnations of the last 14 years.

The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, complacently declared last week that this was just how capitalism operated – even as we learned that another 21 companies worth £24.6bn had joined the exodus from the UK’s public markets this year alone. It was a variant of Philip Hammond’s comment in 2016 on Japanese SoftBank taking over yet another of our tech jewels, the chip designer ARM. What was obviously an exercise in technological vandalism was instead proof positive that Britain was “open for business”, a view echoed at the time by that other high priest of wealth generation, Nigel Farage. This reflex mantra of Tory ministers and Brexiters alike is a necessity: to say anything else would reveal the paucity of their world view.